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Ephraim Tutt needs no introduction to the general public. I cannot, however, with any grace refuse his request to contribute a brief foreword to these reminiscences undertaken largely because of my own importunity. Indeed, I have for so many years played the part of Boswell to his Johnson, and availed myself so freely of the material with which he has supplied me for fictional purposes, that natural gratitude, if nothing else, requires my acquiescence.

Mr. Tutt, if left to himself, would have been the last person in the world to assume that anyone could possibly be interested in the facts of his private life, and, when I asserted the contrary, he protested that, as Sir John Selden said of equity, an autobiography is “a roguish thing” which almost unfailingly lowers its author in the public esteem. Too many old fools, he declared, had already filled thousands of printed pages with complaisant accounts of their ancestry and babyhood, followed by vapid glorification of their own supposed achievements, which had made their old age a laughing stock instead of a tranquil prelude to a deserved oblivion.

To this I replied that there were few living individuals as notable as himself about whom so little was in fact known, that if he were to leave any authoritative record, however meagre, concerning his life, he had better do so while he was still in full possession of his faculties, and that he owed it to himself to explain for the benefit both of his detractors and his friends why he had so often felt free to circumvent the laws which he was sworn to uphold. I threatened moreover that, if he did not personally undertake the task, I should be seriously inclined to attempt it myself. This last did the trick. “May God forbid!” he exclaimed.

That is the sole reason, I believe, why so retiring and, I might add, so cagy an old fellow as my learned friend consented to put pen to paper; but when at last I had persuaded him to do so, I realized that Mr. Tutt’s own account of himself must inevitably disappoint his admirers. While another might convincingly describe his learning, benignity and wit, his natural modesty would make it impossible for him to portray his own most x engaging personal characteristics. Thus any autobiography of Ephraim Tutt would savor of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. He could not even by implication suggest what a remarkable man he was, and hence he would naturally fail to measure up to his full stature in the public mind.

Yet this must be a defect common to all autobiographies. For it is, in fact, only those with whom we are familiar by reputation whose autobiographies we care to peruse. We do so not to discover them but to find out more about them. So I brushed my apprehension aside. Any picture which Mr. Tutt might paint of himself could not alter the impression built up through half a century.

Not inaptly described as a combination of Robin Hood, Abraham Lincoln, Puck and Uncle Sam, he was beloved by a multitude of his fellow countrymen who knew him as a homespun but distinguished member of the bar, erudite and resourceful, a terror alike to judges and professional opponents, generous, warm of heart, intolerant of sham and of privilege, a doughty champion of the weak, with an impish humor which enabled him to laugh cases out of court and a fertility of invention that often turned what appeared almost certain defeat into victory. The reports of the celebrated trials in which he had taken part had been compiled into many volumes and were widely read. His ramshackly figure in his rusty frock coat and stove-pipe hat, the fringe of white hair overlapping his collar, his corrugated features with their long nose and jimber jaw, his faded but keen old eyes and quizzical glance were familiar in illustration and cartoon, while the antique flavor of his costume had long rendered him as conspicuous upon the streets of the metropolis as did Mark Twain’s white Panama suit. Yet to us of his generation it was but the natural continuance of the regulation dress of every lawyer at the turn of the century; he was used to it and it merely did not occur to him to change. Few realize, perhaps, that for some time after the Civil War the members of the New York bar argued their cases in full dress suits and that forty years ago top hats and Prince Albert coats were habitually worn by attorneys in both the civil and criminal courts.

Mr. Tutt was a national character, too well established to warrant the fear that he would do himself harm; but, even if he did, he owed it to the world to disclose the circumstances and influences xi that had made him the sort of man he was and to explain what was behind his frankly acknowledged thesis that law is one thing and justice quite another. That he was fully aware of the danger to which he exposed himself is shown by the fact that he handed over this manuscript to his publisher with the comment: “If people say that Tutt has gone and made a fool of himself, I shall reply in the words of St. Paul to the Corinthians: ‘Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool that he may be wise.’”

In any event let me take this opportunity to state that of all the men I have known in my forty years at the bar Ephraim Tutt is the wisest, the kindest, the most eloquent and most astute. His friendship is my most valued possession, and I can well afford to overlook the probability that he by no means holds me in the same high esteem as I do him. A true liberal and humanitarian, he is a legal Don Quixote who has the courage of his illusions and follows the dictates of his heart even where his head says there is no way, a fiery advocate of the poor or those unjustly accused—well described by the Psalmist: “The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart; his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.”

Arthur Train.

New York, July, 1943.